Jehangir S. Pocha
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Dandong , China -- Citizens in this town at the bank of the Yalu River , which separates China from North Korea , were surprised to see some of their neighbors coasting down the water in rusty boats festooned with colorful flags last weekend.
It was hardly a spectacular sight -- one battered naval corvette with a noisy motor and one 1970s-style river cruiser that was once white but now almost the same shade of gray as the smoke it belched.
Yet the boats caught the fancy of almost everyone along the wide waterfront boulevard of this border town in China 's northeastern Liaoning province.
Men out fishing at its marbled embankment, women washing clothes and children taking dips in the river's dull green water all gathered excitedly to watch the boats pass under the "Broken Bridge," which once linked China to Korea but was bombed by U.S. forces during the 1950-53 Korean War, and the newer Friendship Bridge that stands next to it.
"We don't really see them socializing on the river much," said Yun Yi, 67, a local retiree taking a morning amble by the river, gesturing to the North Korean town of Sinuiju that lies across from Dandong . "I wonder what's going on."
On Monday, isolated and impoverished North Korea celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea, whose leaders Kim Il Sung, and his son, North Korea's current strongman Kim Jong Il, have ruled the country since the end of World War II in 1945.
The weekend cruise along the Yalu was just one of a string of festivities the isolated state has been putting on for its impoverished citizens for two months. The grand finale is the Mass Games, an exuberant gymnastics display to be held in Pyongyang this weekend.
Gazing across at Sinuiju from China , it is hard to see why ordinary North Koreans would feel like celebrating. While the Chinese side of the Yalu glitters with the glass and steel of numerous high-rise apartments and giant hoardings, the North Korean side looks drab and derelict.
The riverside is cluttered with debris from broken and beached ships, and the rows of concrete factories with soaring chimneys that dot the area are empty, their broken windows swaying gently in the wind. A giant, unmoving Ferris wheel in the middle of this industrial decay adds to the stillness of the landscape.
The only gleaming things along the stretch of harbor visible from Dandong are the AK-47 rifles slung over the shoulders of North Korean soldiers in khaki, roughly inspecting the catch a few small fishing boats have brought in.
"It was not always like this," said Ping, a Chinese local of Korean descent who is a junior partner in a textile factory in North Korea and visits there often. "I'm 43, and I remember when we went there as kids to see our extended family it was a very warm, loving country. After every meal, men would beat out a song on their metal plates, and the women would dance. They were also much more advanced than us and had TVs and things, and we used to buy things there to sell in China ."
Now the tables have painfully turned. The collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with North Korea's unwillingness to reform itself, as China has done, has brought the country to the edge of total despair, said Ping.
Every year, hundreds, if not thousands, of North Koreans try to bribe or steal their way across the border into China . Many are killed.
"It's tragic," said Ping . "Our (North Korean) workers there earn just $2 a month. Even then, it's not really easy for us to do business there. The factory can never keep deadlines because they have no power. Sometimes we think of moving our factory to India or someplace, but I'm Korean, and my partner is South Korean, and we feel a responsibility to our brothers."
Such fraternal feelings are strong in this area, which is home to about 2 million ethnic Koreans. Most of them, like Ping 's grandfather, came here when northeastern China and Korea were colonized by the Japanese and organized into the puppet state of Manchukuo under the nominal control of China 's last Qing dynasty Manchu emperor, Pu Yi.
Against all odds, Korean families divided by colonization, World War II , China 's 1949 revolution, the Korean War and the Communist years that followed, have maintained their ties. Family members visit each other during weddings, funerals and other observances.
In this, they are helped by the fact that China -- which is eager to retain its influence in North Korea and placate its potentially restive Korean minority -- has maintained a close relationship with Pyongyang .
Every day, an endless stream of trucks crosses the Friendship Bridge , with the North Koreans bringing in minerals, stones and scrap iron for the Chinese, who drive over food, oil, electronics, household goods and clothes, much of it from Southeast Asia , Europe and the United States . The trade, which provides North Korea with about 75 percent of its imports, is estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion a year. Analysts say this lifeline is probably the only thing keeping the world's last Stalinist state from imploding.
The feeling that Korea is a nation torn apart is palpable here. Frustrated and angered, many people lapse into a common, and often government-encouraged, response: blaming the United States .
"It's because of the American troops in South Korea and Taiwan that our countries can't be unified," said Fu Xiang Chun, 75, a local retiree who remembers the Korean War vividly. "The Americans are the worst double-faced people."
But Chu Shulong, professor of international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing , said the Chinese government might not be in a hurry to see a unified Korea either.
"It brings up the question of our Korean minority and how they will react if Korea is one again," he said.
Ping said there is no doubt about what will happen.
"Eighty percent of the Koreans here want to be one again," he said. "We would all want to join Korea , and if we cannot, then we'll just pack up here and leave."
Across the river in Sinuiju , such concerns seem far away from people's minds. The few people fishing in the river with home-made rods steadfastly ignore Chinese tourists sputtering up and down the Yalu in motorboats, trying to peer into a country many here describe as "crazy."
"Poor guys," said one of the tourists. "They just want to catch fish and go home."
Jehangir S. Pocha is a correspondent for the Chronicle Foreign Service based in Bejing. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.